It seems to me, and this is sad if it’s true, especially as I have an academic background myself, that the lower you go down the medical food chain, the more human the practitioners become. So, at the top you have the consultants who are so far removed from reality that they only see you as a point on a chart of severe to mild cases; then there’s the nurse practitioner, brisk and efficient, not going to put up with her time being wasted, slightly patronising, but well-meaning and quite friendly on a good day. And somewhere ‘below’ her … although some people reading this might ‘flame’ me for suggesting they’re not on a par (or perhaps even that they should be higher), are the occupational therapists and physios. So far I have experienced two physios and one occupational therapist and they’ve all been lovely – human, helpful and really caring.

I’m afraid the occupational therapist (OT) might have been a bit too human and caring under the circumstances, which is why I ended up rather snuffly with her, if not quite bursting into tears! I was having a BAD day – I don’t know why, but another law of arthritis (or mine anyway) seems to be that you NEVER see the consultant or nurse practitioner on a bad day. However, the day I attended the early arthritis clinic, last week, was a very bad day, thank goodness. If you don’t have RA yourself, or perhaps even if you do have it and don’t have to work within the confines of the NHS, you might not understand the ‘thank goodness’ comment. Well it seems to me that unless the consultant or nurse practitioner actually sees you unable to walk, or with beetroot red joints the size of turnips, they don’t really believe it happens, although they’re all too polite to say so. As my RA seems to come and go and be peripatetic as far as which joints are affected, this is thoroughly frustrating!

Anyway, I turned up at the clinic, after the whole appointment debacle I’ve already mentioned in the post below, and the receptionist couldn’t find me on the system. She was polite, friendly and baffled. Eventually she called over another receptionist, who was also baffled – although lacking the polite friendliness of the first. I was getting just a tad fed up at this point because I hurt, I’d been standing for a while (not comfortable) and I was really worried that after the five month wait they were suddenly going to decide they couldn’t find me on the system … again … and I didn’t have an appointment. She looked at me over her glasses and said, very patronisingly, ‘And what appointment did you think you had today?’ And believe me the italics were hers, not mine – there was a very scornful stress on the word ‘think’.

Eyes flashing, lips a thin line, I growled, ‘I know I have an appointment with the early arthritis clinic.’ She continued to look blank. ‘A combination of occupational therapy and physiotherapy,’ I explained.

She gave a deep frustrated sigh and said, very rudely and abruptly, ‘Oh well then, you’re in the wrong place.’

She went back to baffled. At that moment a third receptionist, who had been sitting quietly in the background dealing with other things, (or possibly just eavesdropping and having a laugh), said ‘No, the early arthritis clinic – it’s this list here you should be working from, and look, the lady’s name is on it.’

‘Call that a list,’ she said, with scorn. Now I have to agree with her here – it was a slightly smaller than A5 bit of paper with a tear down one side, looking like scrap, with a few names scrawled in biro down it. But still … it was her job to know it was there or someone else’s job to have told her. Rather than apologising nicely she managed to grate out, ‘Well … we apologise. Take a seat.’

I was fuming and unfortunately when I fume, rather than yelling and shouting, or even being calm and productive, I just want to burst in to tears … so when the OT was so nice that’s nearly what I did! Anyway, she was very helpful and made some useful suggestions, which I’ll post about separately. Then I saw the physio, who gave me some basic ‘range of motion exercises’ for all the joints and has referred me on for more physio. No idea when that will materialise, so I’ll keep forking out £35 a week for the private one for the moment! I hope the NHS one kicks in soon though!

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A bit about me

My name is not Pollyanna and I'm not a penguin. If you'd not worked out the last bit you should probably stop reading this and seek out a psychologist.

This is a blog about me and rheumatoid arthritis - sounds like fun, huh? Well I'm hoping it'll be a bit more fun than it sounds - hence the Pollyanna part. I'm going to try to stay positive about it and play 'Pollyanna's glad game' - finding reasons to be cheerful basically.

If you really want to know more see the 'About me' page.

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